


About You

by jamwrites



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Coming Out, Gay, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gay Male Character, Gen, M/M, POV Keith (Voltron), Prom, Swearing, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Transgender, Voltron Secret Santa 2016, rated teen and up for swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 20:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9140323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamwrites/pseuds/jamwrites
Summary: It's Prom night, but Keith is holed up in his room. However, Lance is not about to let his best friend mope around by himself; there is work to be done and a Keith to cheer up. Thy chariot awaits.**Keith was halfway through his saddest, most self-pitying playlist when something collided with his bedroom window.It might have actually been the second or third of said somethings, because his headphones were pretty great at blocking out sound and the thump against the window was the sort of thump that said “I’ve already thrown several rocks and I’m getting pretty irritated.”





	

Keith was halfway through his saddest, most self-pitying playlist when something collided with his bedroom window.

It might have actually been the second or third of said somethings, because his headphones were pretty great at blocking out sound and the _thump_ against the window was the sort of thump that said “I’ve already thrown several rocks and I’m getting pretty irritated.”

He frowned, and went to open it. It didn’t take him long to cross the room from his desk-Shiro’s house was pretty small, and Keith’s was the tiniest part of that small-but even so, another rock thumped against the glass just as he was reaching to open it up.

It only occurred to Keith later that there could have been a serial killer waiting outside of the house. And how he had just let them in. If he had been in a right state of mind, he would have realized that sooner. But he wasn’t in a right state of mind, because his thoughts were a swimming soup in the cauldron of the playlist he had named “The Black Plague” for its ability to make him feel dead, so he opened the window without really thinking at all.

“Hello?” Keith hissed. Suddenly, he was very aware of how dark it was outside and his computer made his room bright, but before he could worry too much a face appeared out of the night, white teeth shining in a Cheshire grin.

“Keith, my darling, how are you this fine evening?”

Keith stared. Lance was still in his suit. Well, most of it anyway. His jacket had disappeared, leaving him in a white button-down shirt and black pants with a tired-looking tie hanging around his neck. His collar was popped, probably on purpose.

“What are you doing here?”

“Funny, that was going to be my second question to you. But you didn’t answer the first one, buddy.”

“I’m terrific.”

“Is that why you’re moping in your room listening to your stupid Plague playlist?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you’re Keith. And because you’re not at the dance, where you’re supposed to be.”

“I left.”

“Obviously.”

Lance had drawn himself up to the window and was now resting his elbows on the frame. “Dude, we’ve been looking for you! Guess I should have guessed you’d be holed up in your Keith Kave.”

Keith sighed and flicked Lance lightly on the forehead. “What do you want, Lance?”

“Ow, okay, first of all: that was uncalled for. Second, I know something’s wrong with you tonight. And, while I’m sure you won’t tell me what that is right now, what I am sure of is that you’re coming with me.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” With this, Lance pulled himself up through the window and collapsed into Keith’s room in a gaggle of limbs. When he managed to right himself, Keith saw that there were two smudges of black on Lance’s cheeks, like he was some sort of ninja. “Our chariot awaits, dear Keith. I have come to whisk thee away on a magical night of empty calories and reckless abandon.”

Keith sighed. He thought he had managed to slip away from the dance unseen, but obviously that was wrong.

The dance. Even the thought of it made his stomach roil. Ignoring...ignoring what happened, it had still been a bad night. He pressed his thumbs into his eyes, and watched the retinal fireworks dance, memories flashing behind them. Undulating crowds of bodies and shifting music blending together in a phantasmagoria that he couldn’t make sense of, couldn’t join, because he body refused to move and his mouth rebelled against speaking. He was alone in that room full of people. Even right next to his friends, he was alone.

What am I doing here? _He had turned around and around on the dance floor._ What am I doing here? _And someone was pushing through the people, heading towards him, clutching a phone-_

“No,” Keith said again. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Lance’s grin never waned. “I thought you might say that. I talked to Shiro on the way over here. He’s cutting the wifi for the rest of the night. If you stay here, you’ll die of boredom.”

“I think I can handle it.”

“Also, he’s throwing a party. A big one.”

Keith’s stomach dropped. Shit. Shiro was in the middle of grad school, but there were plenty of his old college buddies around, enough to fill up the tiny house for monthly ragers. Of course they never started that way, but Shiro got loud and happy when he got drunk (which wasn’t often, but still). If Shiro was throwing a party, there was to be no peace for Keith that night. The thought of all those people in the house, the music, the smell of alcohol...Keith’s insides twisted.

He looked at Lance, already knowing he was checkmated.

“What do you have planned?”

If possible, Lance’s grin grew even wider. “Oh, my dear, dear Keith. I thought you would never ask.”

 

**

 

 _Abuela_ was a piece of shit.

Of course, that was in reference to the car, not Lance’s grandmother. His grandmother had given him the car (well, mostly; it was technically hers but he was allowed to have it on weekdays) as a birthday present a year ago, and in thanks he had named it after her.

Still, though, that didn’t change the fact that _Abuela_ was a Dodge Caravan from some crusty year in the 90’s, and thus was not only a piece of shit, but a really large piece of shit to boot. She had fake plastic wood paneling on her sides, a rectangular body, and hideous purple paint.

Lance loved her with all his heart.

At the moment, _Abuela_ was idling in Shiro’s driveway with all the grace of a tuberculosis patient, one headlight flickering and the driver’s side door hanging open.

“Like I told you,” Lance said, patting the car with lovingly. “Your chariot awaits.”

So they got in, Lance slipping behind the wheel and Keith pushing aside the piles of trash to carve himself a space in the passenger seat. He was a little surprised that Hunk and Pidge weren’t present, but was too tired to worry about it. Also, should he be getting mad at Shiro? Keith had made it pretty obvious how he felt when he had stormed into the house, and Shiro was going and throwing a party anyway. He made a mental note to be pissed at his brother later, if he ever got back alive.

That was because Lance’s driving was terrible. After checking his phone and firing off a quick text, Lance threw _Abuela_ into reverse and whipped out of the driveway before Keith had time to buckle himself in.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise, and it’s not just one place. But before we get to the meat of Project Keith, apparently we have to go to Walgreens.”

That _was_ a surprise. Lance was a known Walgreen’s boycotter, mostly because they were all the same and thus took jobs away from architects, which was Hunk’s biggest aspiration in life. Hunk himself didn’t really care, but to Lance that just meant he had to care for the both of them.

Walgreens was on the other side of town, but “town” was only a population of five thousand or so, so it wasn’t that far. As they drove, Keith watched the streetlights woosh by. He hadn’t even changed out of his suit. It had all happened so fast he hadn’t thought about it; getting the hell out of the dance, driving home, storming to his room.

_Someone was pushing through the crowd, eyes darting, searching for someone. They locked on Keith. A predatory smile tugged on her lips. She was holding a phone the way someone would hold a gun._

Keith pushed it all away.

There was no radio, because _Abuela’s_ radio didn’t work in temperatures below forty degrees. Lance filled up the silence with talk to compensate. Keith knew that Lance didn’t know why he had made a sudden escape from prom, and so he was grateful that Lance didn’t press the issue. He also knew that talking was Lance’s way of skirting around the issue until Keith broached it himself, which he had no intention of doing. The second he thought about _that_ , that thing deep inside of him, it shied away. Sometimes Keith wondered if he had buried it so deep that it would never come out.

Of course, tonight it had been dragged out. Kicking and screaming. And now it was never going be seen again.

 

Five minutes later, _Abuela_ limped into the Walgreen’s parking lot. Anyone who hadn’t ridden in her before would swear that if Lance cut the engine it would never start up again, but Keith knew better. The thing about _Abuela_ was that she was something of an adrenaline junky; always riding on the verge of death, but never quite tipping over into it. She liked to keep you guessing.

“What are we looking for?”

“Not a lot; I’ll just be a sec.” Lance didn’t really invite Keith to go with him. Still, though, Keith, had no intention of hanging around in _Abuela_ while she idled and risk her fumes leaking into the cabin, so he unbuckled and followed Lance inside.

A Walgreens at around nine at night wasn’t nearly as creepy as Keith had expected; mostly it was just empty with a tired mom or two tooling around looking for diapers or ibuprofen.

Keith trailed Lance, running his hands along the stuff on the shelves, wondering for the millionth time why he had agreed to come. He felt like curling up underneath his blankets and listening to Black Plague on repeat and never facing the world again, because after tonight, the world was unfaceable. For now, what had happened was still contained, but it would spread. Everyone at school minus Lance had probably already heard.

And now nothing was going to be the same. Ever.

“Shit,” Lance said under his breath, squatting down to look at the stuff near the floor. They were in the pharmacy aisle. “They’re not here.”

Keith rested his head against the shelf full of Band-Aids. Though it was a ridiculous thought, he imagined he could feel the world closing in, the air around him getting harder to breath. This was just like what it had felt like at the dance. He was so screwed. Everything was messed up.

He forced his eyes open.

And his heart stopped.

There, rounding the corner of their aisle, was a boy. _The_ boy. A boy whose face Keith knew very, very well. He actually felt all of the blood drain from his face. This was the first time he had ever actually seen him. In real life, that was.

“Lance,” Keith choked. “Lance, I’ll be in the car.”

And then he was pushing past Lance, ducking his head, run-walking through Walgreens probably looking like he stole something but he didn’t care, he just needed out.

The cramped confines of _Abuela_ were a comfort after the clinical interior of the store. Keith took a breath, and then another. He had made it out, and the boy hadn’t seen him.

Why? Tonight of all nights, why? Any other time...but no. It had had to happen now, when Keith would rather die than face that part of himself. And when he was with Lance to boot.

It was like Murphy’s Law was stalking him; anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And all of the shitty possible wrongs were coming to life, tripping over each other like dominos in their eagerness to fuck with Keith’s life.

The driver’s side door slammed, and a gust of chilly air came with it. Keith didn’t look at Lance; his head was in his hands, resting on his knees.

He could feel Lance about to say something, so he got there first instead: “Wherever we’re going next, let’s go. Now.”

And for once, Lance was quiet. _Abuela_ wheezed to life, and then they were driving. Away, away, away.

Keith didn’t take his head from his hands for a long time.

 

**

 

“Gigi’s?’

“Why do you say it like that? You should be saying it like this;” Lance’s voice dropped an octave, and became breathy and sensual. “ _Gigi’s._ ”

“Stop. Never do that again.”

“We’re going to _Gigi’s_ for ice cream.”

“I’m going to throw up.”

Lance sniggered. Fifteen minutes of driving had taken them out of town and into the city, specifically the high-end shopping district. It was the kind of neighborhood that was named “Clearway Center” or “Fairview Station” or “Elm Park. The roads were cobbled and meant for walking, not driving, and all the shops were built with wooden pillars and big windows and had year-round lights strung on their roof peaks.

This particular shopping center went by the name of Cedar Avenue, and was home to the best ice cream parlor in the state. Keith and Lance and Pidge and Hunk had been going for years to celebrate momentous occasions. Nothing like birthdays, though. Gigi’s was too good for birthdays. No, a Gigi’s visit was warranted when Hunk had his first kiss, or when Pidge had gotten news that his brother had been found and his MIA status revoked. The ice cream was ridiculously expensive, but it was worth it.

Tonight, Gigi’s was crowded with other kids getting food before or after their prom; there were a couple other high schools in the city, so there were plenty of kids Keith didn’t recognize. Would he see _him_ here? Surely that would be too much of a coincidence.

But Lance paid for their ice cream and they were walking out, and Keith hadn’t seen him. It was okay.

“Where to next?”

“I told you man, it’s a secret. Don’t you know what the means?”

Keith knew where they were headed before they had gone more than a quarter mile, and his chest filled with something hard to describe. They were driving on the road that circled Cedar Avenue and that would eventually take them all around to its north end, otherwise known as the Lights.

“Okay,” Lance said, after they had pulled up. “So this is the part where you start talking to me.”

Keith looked out the window. He wasn’t quite sure if this was fair; the Lights were his favorite spot, so much so that it was almost spiritual. For whatever reason, someone in the city planning committee had really wanted a big, amphitheatre-like cement circle where tiny dots of light were installed to give the effect of walking among a sky of stars. It was touristy and kitschy and kind of ugly and Keith loved it with all of his heart. It was here that Shiro had told him that he was going to become Keith’s legal guardian. That...well, that kind of made the place special by default.

And Lance knew it. Keith squirmed, trying to find a way around him.

“Where are Pidge and Hunk?”

“On standby for Phase Two of tonight’s project. Now, are you gonna keep avoiding the really, really big elephant, or shall I?”

Keith looked away. He didn’t know if he wanted to talk about what had happened. But at the same time, he hadn’t given Lance anything at all.

Suddenly, the confines of _Abuela_ which had half an hour earlier been a refuge seemed too small. Keith pushed open the door and started walking, knowing Lance would follow.

The main structure of the Lights were big concrete steps that formed the amphitheater. At random and beautiful places the little lights shined through, and it was these steps that Keith walked along. What was he trying to outdistance?

“Keith,” Lance said, catching up with him. “Dude, look. I don’t know what’s going on with you tonight, but...but I’m worried man. You’re acting even more emo than usual, and it’s already a lot of work to handle your usual.”

Keith sank down to sit on a concrete step. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

_She was holding the phone the way someone would hold a gun._

_“Oh K-e-eith!” Her voice was piercing, even above the music. The phone was holding...was it Keith’s? How did she get it?_

_And then he saw what app it was open to. He saw whose picture was on the screen._

“I’m-” he almost said “fine”, but then realized how stupid that was. He obviously wasn’t fine.

Did he want to talk about this? How could he even imagine talking about this? Keith had pushed it down so far he might have forgotten about it, had it not come seeping back out of every pore in his being, coating him, drenching him in its truth. And tonight, Nyma had thrown a match on it and he had lit up like an explosive.

It didn’t really matter if he told Lance now, because as soon as Lance checked Facebook, he would know. Wouldn’t it be better this way?

And yet. The words refused to rise to his mouth. Too far down, too far down.

“Part of it…” Keith waited while Lance sat down next to him. He made himself stop pressing into his eyes. “Part of it was what it normally is, you know? I was scared.”

“But that isn’t all of it, right?”

“Right.”

And then _he_ had shown up. Was that the universe’s idea of a joke? Keith wasn’t sure he hadn’t been dreaming. But no, he would know that face anywhere. He had spent hours staring at it with a dopey smile.

It was all too much. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t.

“Keith, are you...are you crying?” And suddenly Lance’s voice was different. “No no no no no, dude, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be pushing you. I’m sorry!”

“It’s not you, Lance.” Keith hiccuped and wiped his sleeve across his face. It was a rental suit, but he figured tears would come out in the wash.

And then something happened that had never happened before: Lance was wrapping his long arms around Keith and pulling him in for an awkward sitting-down hug. Keith hiccuped again in surprise. Lance was a touchy-feely person, always putting his hand on your shoulder or ruffling your hair, but hugging was a first.

“I’m sorry,” Lance said again into Keith’s shoulder. “I think I messed this all up a little. I just wanted to cheer you up and now I made you cry and I’m just now realizing that it was not a good move to take you here because duh, and-”

“Lance,” Keith cut him off and pulled back a little from the hug. “Lance, you’re okay. None of this is because of you.”

Keith was surprised to see that Lance was almost crying too. Great. Now he had made his best friend get all weepy too. When would all of this just end, already?

Lance let go of Keith and gave a wobbly effort at a smile. “Okay, man. But...ignore what I said earlier. You know, about needing to get it out. I won’t force you to do anything. That isn’t cool.”

“It’s...I need to talk about it. I think.” He sniffed, wetly. “I mean, who else would I talk about it with?”

And that, that right there for some reason broke him, and Keith was crying again and leaning forward and burying his face in Lance, not even caring that they were so close because they were close. They had known each other since kindergarten. All of them had; him and Lance, and Hunk who had just been the little kid with asthma who brought his stuffed animals to school, and Pidge who Keith had met after he had gotten into a fist fight in the second grade, they were all the best friends anyone could ask for.

“I think I was having a panic attack.” The words came slowly. Reluctantly. But Keith made himself search for them. He grabbed them out of their hidden places because this was it. There was no more hiding or ignoring or lying by omission. “But that’s nothing special, you know? It was just all the people and the noise and I can’t dance.”

“Dude, none of us can dance.”

“Don’t even start. I’ve seen you, Lance.”

They both laughed, and for a moment it wasn’t like they were sitting in the Lights, crying together on prom night.

Keith looked down and fiddled with his shoelaces, not able to meet Lance’s eye. “So I was already kind of freaking out. But then Nyma showed up-” a sharp intake of breath from Lance. He and Nyma had had a short, ugly thing a few years ago. She had hated Lance and anyone associated with him ever since.

“Wait, Nyma?”

“Yeah, she had my phone, I don’t know how, maybe she found it in my jacket in the hall, she’s always looking to mess with us.” Keith frowned. He wasn’t getting anywhere, this didn’t make sense. He needed to start over. Go slow.

And this right here: this was really it.

“Ok,” he said. “Back up for a second. So...so last year I made a Sparkz account.” He knew Lance was about to freak out over Keith making a dating account, and he knew if Lance got rolling on that he would never stop, so Keith held up a hand. “And I found someone on it.”

“Oh my _God_.”

“And we...and we started talking, and then we kept talking, and we would talk at night before we went to bed and after we were supposed to bed we would still be talking…”

“Keith! Oh my _God_! What is her name? What’s she like?” Lance was practically ready to combust. And so was Keith. His chest felt light and heavy at the same time, his fingers were buzzing and his face was hot. He was on a precipice. Nothing else mattered.

“That’s the thing,” he said, scrubbing at the back of his head. He met Lance’s eyes for a moment. “That’s...she’s...it’s a ‘he’, actually.”

“Oh. _Oh._ ” Lance sat back. And Keith was watching his face so carefully. Had this been a mistake? He felt like there was no breath in the world left for his lungs to draw in. He was empty and floating and falling all at the same time.

“Oh,” Lance said again. “Keith, I...thank you for telling me. For trusting me with that.”

But as he was saying it, he was starting to smile, and Keith felt himself blushing. There it was. After all that time, there it was. Like he had been prepared to break someone out of a prison and had found that the door was made out of paper mache. He felt...lighter. Relieved. A coolness spread over Keith’s fingers and face, quenching the fire that had burned there a minute ago.

Before Keith could react, Lance was hugging him again. “Have you told anyone else?”

“No,” Keith said. “No, not yet.”

Lance let go and gave him a look like a proud dad. His wobbly smile was back. “Not even Shiro?”

“Not even Shiro.”

This did something to Lance. His eyes widened in surprise and then his ears began to turn a bright shade of pink. Keith knew the significance of it, his choosing to tell Lance first, and he could see it on Lance’s face and the tears that were rolling down his cheeks. For the first time in living memory, Lance was at a loss for words.

“Thank you, man. Like...that’s...you... _thank you_.”

They were quiet for a few moments. Letting it sink in. Keith was raw. His chest had been opened up and he could feel his organs exposed to the air, his heart pumping blood and his vessels carrying it. All the world could see into the deepest parts of him. More importantly, Lance could.

But all the world could already see, because of Nyma.

“Okay, so...back to Nyma.” Keith sucked in as much air as he could manage and let it out through his nose. There was so much he could talk about to Lance and he was sure Lance had even more words, but he needed to finish this. There would be time enough later for them to talk. “Like I said, she somehow got my phone. And then she found me in the dance. S-she…”

_She was holding the phone the way someone would hold a gun._

_“Oh K-e-eith!” Her voice was piercing, even above the music. The phone was holding...was it Keith’s? How did she get it?_

_And then he saw what app it was open to. He saw whose picture was on the screen._

“She had my phone. And she had it open to the Sparkz app. And she had it open to my...to my chat. With him. And his profile picture.”

Lance hadn’t been there. Somehow he had lost track of him and Hunk and Pidge; they had disappeared a little before, and Keith wasn’t sure--

A memory came back to him. It was before Nyma, that wonderful time before she had detonated her bomb.

_“Hey, dude, Keith,” Lance appeared at his side at the change of a song, tugging on his sleeve. He was wearing a dozen plastic bead necklaces they handed out at the door and two pairs of the lined sunglasses, one over the other. “Meet us in the English room in ten minutes.”_

_“Why?” he asked. He was glad of the distraction, glad to have an excuse not to be dancing._

_Lance shrugged. “No idea man, Pidge just said to come.”_

_The ocean of bodies had tugged them apart after that, or Lance had gone to get food from the table, because the next moment, Keith was alone._

_After a few more minutes of navigating the dance, trying to catch up Lance, he decided to head for the safety of the wall. Keith turned, and someone was pushing through the crowd, eyes darting, searching for someone. They locked on Keith. A predatory smile tugged on her lips. She was holding a phone the way someone would hold a gun._

“She saw everything. I don’t know how much she read, but she...she saw a lot. Definitely enough to find out.”

Lance was staring. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “What happened?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “She was taunting me. I don’t even know why...I think she just...she just thinks it’s fun. To screw with other people’s lives.”

_“Keith, darling, is this yours?” Nyma’s smile was dripping venom, burning holes in the floor. “I found it in the hall and thought I should return it.”_

_Keith felt his stomach drop out. His phone was open to his chat, his picture was up, she had_ seen _. She had seen everything. He felt the world falling away, burning, burning up._

_Fire coursed through his veins._

_“Give that back!” He snatched at the phone, but Nyma was quicker. She jerked back and then held it above her head like she was keeping a toy away from a child._

_She was beautiful, Keith thought, like a viper was beautiful. Nyma’s dress was patterned with deadly shapes, hugging her body, her hair done up and makeup put on in careful, jagged edges. Everything about her was sharp. She would cut him, he knew, if he made a mistake around her. One wrong word and Nyma’s blades would go slipping through his skin._

_“Oh, Keith-y, don’t be angry! I’m just trying to help!” Now her smile was turning sickly-sweet, then morphing into mock concern. She was beautiful, but everything about her was ugly. Painted on. Fake, fake, fake. How many faces did she have behind this one?_

_“You’re not. Give it back!”_

_“Oh, but I am! Wouldn’t you rather just get this secret off your chest?”_

_A glacier moved into his heart._

_“You wouldn’t.”_

_“Wouldn’t what, Keith-y? I’m just trying to help. I read all of this stuff, it’s really cute. And I can help you! I think all you need is a little...push.” She cocked her head. What made Keith sick, really sick, was that he was pretty sure Nyma was being sincere. She had spent so long drinking her own Kool-Aid that she was actually starting to believe her own game was real._

_“Give it back,” he said again, but weak. He was no match for her. All around them, the music pounded in neon colors, and skin moved against skin and people sang and were blind to the two of them, standing here in combat._

_Nyma pouted. “I don’t think you’re appreciating what I’m trying to do here, Keith-y. I’m your friend.”_

_Keith lunged for the phone, and this time, Nyma let him have it. She put up no resistance at all so that his weight carried him through. He went stumbling past her and she laughed like diamonds falling onto a blade._

_“It’s okay, I don’t need that thing anymore. I already helped you!”_

_He turned around, slowly, blood pounding. His hair was coming out of its knot in the back of his head. Hanging down over his eyes in black strands, Keith feld half an animal with his anger and his fear running together._

_“What do you mean.” It wasn’t a question, because he was already looking down at his phone. Flicking through the open apps. Facebook. He never went on his Facebook account. Keith tapped on it, feeling half a ghost with Nyma’s gaze cutting him to ribbons. He was untethered. He was a rodent and she had him in her coils, fangs sunk deep in his neck, her voice soothing him to sleep._

_He was logged into his Facebook, and there were two dozen notifications on a post he had made. Keith tried to swallow his fear. There, on his wall. Five minutes ago he had posted screenshots off of Sparkz._

_Screenshots of his relationship level on Sparkz. Of who that status was with._

_And written underneath the uploaded photos: “so happy to finally come out and tell you all!”_

_He felt his throat tightening. His breath coming shorter and shorter. The poison was in every cell of his body now, every nerve ending and synaptic gap._

_“What’s the matter?” Nyma put a hand on his shoulder. “You should be thanking me!”_

_Keith felt bile rising in his throat. This was happening. This post was on Facebook, and there were already two dozen reactions to it. Even as he was looking, two more. His eyes darted around the dance floor. Some people had their phones out. Were they checking Facebook? It was a small school; everyone was friends on that stupid site. His post would show up on all of their feeds._

_The gymnasium tilted crazily. Keith pushed past Nyma, who was laughing, and stumbled through a mass of people dancing. He had to get out. Get out get out get out. Through the hall. Past the chaperones and the cop and nothing was real. This was all fake. A fever dream._

_Keith wrenched open his car door. Fumbled with they keys. Ignition._

_As he drove, he wept._

When he finished telling Lance all of this, Keith sat back. There was a slight wind tonight. He imagined it was blowing the glow of the lights into his face, and it felt nice. Real.

“I can’t believe her. I can’t believe her!” Lance balled up his fists. “She’s...she’s fucking insane, Keith! That’s terrible!”

He sighed in agreement. “I know. I had to get out there, so I went home. I mean, where else was I supposed to go? Who was I supposed to tell?” And now that fear was coming back to him. He took several short breaths. “I was so scared, and numb, and I couldn’t be there. I-I felt alone. Like nothing could help.”

Lance made a noise, but Keith was hardly listening anymore. He felt himself pouring out.

“I guess I had always kind of felt like that, sort of alone, but I...that was the worst it had ever been.”

“What?”

“I know. I mean...there was just nobody. Nobody who could understand.”

“Wait, what?” And this time Lance’s voice was lower. Keith looked at him.

“I mean, you get it, right? It’s...so different. And I had to keep it in for so long that I could never...I just got used to never telling anyone, and to feeling alone-”

“Keith, you weren’t alone.”

“I know, I know. But-”

“No, why does there have to be a ‘but’ there? You’re not alone, Keith, that’s ridiculous.”

Keith frowned. “Wait, are you getting mad at me?”

“No! I don’t know!” Lance threw his hands in the air. “I mean, I just think it’s kind of shitty of you to act like you’re the only human on the face of the planet, you know? And to be like, ‘oh, there’s nobody who can help me’ when I’m literally sitting right here, helping you.”

“That’s not what I mean, Lance!” Keith felt himself getting angry again. Of course Lance wouldn’t understand, how could he? Nobody had felt like this except for Keith. Nobody had had to hide all of this. “I can’t believe you’re getting mad! Do you realize how shitty my night has been?”

Lance’s head snapped around, and he gave a low, terrible laugh. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I mean, how could someone like me possibly understand?”

“Lance-”

“No, it’s okay Keith. I know you don’t expect me to get all of you deep and dark emotions and how hard you life is all the time. None of us could ever understand you; it’s not like I’m bi or anything and know what not being straight is like. But yeah, you know what, now that I think about it? Thank you for asking how my night was. Because you never did that. You never bothered to tell me anything.”

“I wasn’t ready, I-”

“I’m not talking about you being gay, Keith!” Lance stood up, too angry to sit still. “It’s not about that, I don’t care about that. I mean, I care, but, like…” He stopped, ran a hand through his hair. Keith watched with a mounting sense of fury and dread. He could feel a car accident coming and there was nothing he could do but step on the gas.

“Then what is it, huh? What huge thing do you have to get off your chest? Because I’m still feeling pretty shitty, so what could possibly-”

“IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!” Lance rounded on him. His words hit Keith like a battering ram. “Holy _fuck_ , Keith! Not everything in the entire universe about you! I’ve been hanging out with you all night and all you’ve wanted to talk about is you. You’ve never asked about me, or how I am, nothing. So you know what? I’ll just do that for you.

“Did you even stop to think about us? Like, do you even realize, even now, that we all came in your car? And then you fucking disappeared and never texted any of us or anything, and your car wasn’t in the parking lot? We were worried about you, dude, and Hunk’s inhaler was in your car, did you even think about him? But Pidge and Hunk couldn’t find it in your car at Shiro’s, so they texted me and told me to stop by Walgreens to pick one up. They didn’t have any. Did you even wonder why we stopped there?

“We were so worried and we texted and called you and _nothing_ . You didn’t give us shit. My mom had to leave her shift early to come and pick us up and get _Abuela_ so that I could then go looking for _your_ dead ass. And even then, when I find you and see that you’re okay, even then I try to cheer you up, and you just throw it back in my face.”

Keith jerked to his feet. He wouldn’t take this. Not from Lance, not tonight, not after everything that had happened to him. “Okay, fine! I’m sorry about the fucking car, Jesus! Is that what you wanted to hear? I’m sorry you had to get another ride home while my whole fucking world was collapsing!”

A cold breeze blew through them both, carrying Lance’s bitter laugh. “You’re so ignorant, dude. God, I can’t believe you. Haven’t you even been listening to me? _Not everything’s about you._ You know how I told you to show up in the English room? Because Pidge wanted us there? Yeah, she was really fucking thrilled that you ditched her.”

That threw him. Keith frowned.

“Wait, ‘her’? Don’t you mean ‘him’? What did he want us there for?”  
Lance smiled ruefully and shook his head. A snort of air escaped his nose. “Like I said, dude. You’re not the first person to have to come out.”

Taking a few steps away, Lance stretched his arms above his head and was quiet for a moment. When he turned back to Keith, he was shaking his head.

“Pidge wanted us in the English room,” Lance said, “because she wanted to come out to us. She’s trans. She isn’t a ‘he’, and she never has been. She was so scared to tell us, and then you didn’t show and she almost couldn’t do it. But she did, because she’s the strongest fucking person I know.

“And we were there for her. We hugged her while she cried and we told her it was going to be okay and that we loved her. We were there for her, Keith. And you just...weren’t.”

A sword sank into Keith’s back. He stumbled. Put out a hand to catch himself, lowered onto the concrete step. Pidge had came out tonight? And he hadn’t even...he hadn’t even known?

A small part of him whispered, how could he? But Keith pushed that selfish voice away. He could have known if he had stayed. If he had given a single damn about anyone other than himself, he could have known.

He looked up at Lance, towering into the night air. “Lance, I…”

Before he could get another word out, Lance’s phone was ringing.

“Hello?” For whatever reason, Lance set it to speaker phone so they could both hear. And from the grainy depths of Lance’s shitty cell service, Pidge’s panicked voice came through.

“Lance? Are you there? Do you have Keith with you? Because we really need to know where Hunk’s inhaler is.”

Lance looked at Keith. The inhaler? Keith willed himself to think. Where the hell was it?

But all he could remember was him, running home, running away.

No. He couldn’t think of that. He couldn’t focus on himself.

Hunk had put it in Keith’s sports bag along with Keith’s iPod, and he had left it in the car.

But he had been listening to his iPod in his room…

“It’s in my bag,” he said. “It’s in my room...shit! No it isn’t! It’s with me, it’s in _Abuela_.”

Pidge yelled something in the background, and then hi- _her_ , her voice got clearer. “Okay, well, get the fuck back in that car and get back to Shiro’s right _fucking_ now.”

“What, why?” Lance’s voice had gone up an octave, and he was staring at Keith over the phone he held at mouth-level. They both already knew the answer.

“Because,” Pidge said, “Hunk is having trouble breathing. He thinks he’s going to have an asthma attack.”

 

The drive back to Shiro and Keith’s house was silent and filled with liquid fear. Lance screamed down the main roads of town, blowing through yellow lights and practically drifting around corners. Keith hung on to the grip and waited, mouth tight. A million different thoughts were bubbling below his mind, but all he could think was, _if Hunk dies, it’ll be my fault._

And it would be. There would be no other explanation for it. His fault, his fault, his fault. Everything came back to him. Of course. Keith was such an idiot-

“I know what you’re thinking.” Lance took a turn way too fast, and they nearly collided with a guard rail. “And it’s not.”

Keith frowned? “What?”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Of course it is.”  
“It isn’t.” A yellow light that was red long before they went through it. Neither of them cared. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve been yelling at you tonight? You don’t get the honor of killing our best friend.”

“I had his inhaler, though.”

“It’s not about you, Keith. It’s not about you, it’s not about you, it’s _not the fuck about you._ ”

“I-”

“I swear to the good baby Jesus that if you say the word ‘I’ one more time, I will crash this car into a tree and kill us both. Stop it. It’s not about you. This night wasn’t all about you. This night was a little about you, but it’s also a little about Pidge, and Hunk, and Nyma apparently and me, too. And this, this right here is not solely about you either.”

Keith wanted to believe him, he did, but he couldn’t see the logic.

“In case you didn’t know, Keith, the universe is a stone-cold bitch. She doesn’t care if you’re gay or transgender or if you just got married or if you’re about to die. Nyma outing you wasn’t your fault, and Pidge choosing tonight to come out wasn’t your fault, and Hunk having a random asthma attack is also not your fault. Things happen.”

“But if I had just thought about something other than myself, none of this-”

“If you were a little less of a selfish ass, a lot of things would be different, but not tonight.” Lance sighed. “I’m sorry, Keith. You had every right to react like you did. There was no way you could have known about Pidge or Hunk. That’s my point; shit happens, and we just have to deal with it. But you, of all people I know, have the unique ability to take an unfeeling universe that dumps random shit on us all the time and make every single one of those shits about _you_.

“But. If you think that you get to make the almost-death of Hunk, _Hunk_ , the greatest most beautiful and golden man any of us will ever know. If you make that about yourself, too? That is something you’re gonna have to change, dude. Because you can make everything in the world belong to you. You can make Pidge’s coming out about you, and my being your friend about you, but you don’t get Hunk. Tell your ego that Hunk is off-limits.

“Now take your bag and fucking run.”

Because they had pulled up in Shiro’s driveway. Keith did as he was told, and was sprinting across the lawn and yanking open the front door so hard it rattled in its hinges, and there was Hunk on the couch and Shiro reaching for his bag and everything was out of his hands, out of his hands, gone, gone gone.

**

“Hey, bro.” Shiro sank into the seat next to Keith and gave him a tired smile. “Hangin’ in there?”

“More or less.”

They were quiet for a moment as some nurses bustled past. The waiting room was filled with pastels and cold air and elevator music, but Keith kind of liked it. It was serene.

Hunk was fine, they had learned a while ago. Even so, Lance and Keith and Pidge and Shiro had stuck around, lingering like that was something they could still do there beside comfort Hunk’s moms. When they learned that Keith had been the one to rush Hunk’s inhaler to him, they had covered Keith with kisses and hugs and a mountain of gratitude. They seemingly ignored the fact that Keith had been the one to accidentally take the inhaler away in the first place.

But maybe that was it, Keith thought. It was an accident. That’s all it was. It wasn’t his fault.

Not about him.

Shiro took a long drink out of a coffee cup. “Ready to head home?”

“I think so.” Something was niggling at the back of his mind. “Shiro, I...about the party you were gonna throw, I-” And then Keith stopped, because what he was going to say next was, _I’m sorry for screwing it up_ , but then he realized...he looked at Lance, who was zoned out with his headphones.

“Do you still want to have one? I could help out.”

Shiro gave him a weird look. Weird, Keith decided, but good.

“Not tonight. I was thinking about just catching up on Parks and Rec for you-”

“No.” Keith shook his head. If someone else did one single thing more for or because of him today, he was going to puke. “No. You wanted to have a party tonight and I’m not gonna mess that up.”

There it was again: that weird look on Shiro’s face. Keith guessed it might be something like admiration, or pride.

“Thanks, bro. I think I’ll go call some of the guys, then.” Shiro stood and stretched.

Keith sniggered. “Don’t forget Allura.”

Shiro’s face turned an interesting shade of red, but he grinned back and pushed Keith, ruffling his hand through Keith’s hair.

After that, it was quiet again. He entertained himself for a minute by checking his Sparkz, but there were no new messages, and Keith was okay with it. The boy who was becoming something more than a friend or an acquaintance...somehow he wasn’t what Keith needed or wanted right now.

Keith allowed himself to close his eyes, just a little, just to take everything in. This felt like one of the longest nights of his life, and yet...it was real in a way that most things weren’t and his conversations on Sparkz were, to a lesser degree. And the people here with him felt like that too. He smiled.

He must have dozed off a little, because when he drifted back into waking, there was a small, warm thing crawling onto the couch beside him.

“Hey,” Pidge said softly, and she turned over on her back, and rested her head on Keith’s shoulder and let her feet dangle off the side of the couch. “Shiro’s gonna drive us home soon.”

“Alright.”

They were quiet. Keith wasn’t sure what Lance had told Pidge, or what he should be telling her, what he should make of the storm of all the things he wanted to tell her.

Pidge got there first. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah. Are you?”

“Okay?”

“M-hm.”

There was a pause before she answered, and Keith felt a lot of unspoken things travel between them in that space of air, a lot of things that could be talked about later but were understood now. Pidge took a deep breath and burrowed closer to Keith. Her voice was sleepy, slow.

“Now I am, yeah. I’m okay.”

When Keith looked up again, Lance was walking towards them, bearing news: they could go in and see Hunk now.

Hunk was lying in the hospital bed, covered to his chest with sheets, his face tired but awake. He was the only one of them to not still be wearing their prom clothes. Keith was just starting to notice the bags under his eyes when those eyes smiled at him, and that ugly feeling inside melted away again.

“Hunk! You’re alive!” Lance screamed and threw himself at the boy, crawling right up onto the bed to hug him.

Hunk smiled, tired but cheerful. “Yeah, seems like I’m gonna make it. For now at least.” And then he looked at Keith. For a moment, Keith felt like shrinking away into the walls. But he didn’t get to do that anymore. He was a part of these people, and there was nothing he could hide from them. Not even if he wanted to.

With a grin, Hunk held out his arms for Keith and Pidge.

 

Lance scooched over a little to make room, and then Keith was crawling onto the bed so that his head was resting on Hunk’s arm. Lance’s legs were in his lap and Pidge was curling into his side, and they were close and warm and right.

Keith breathed that moment in. The four of them, curled up on the hospital bed together. These people, and the one standing in the hallway. Keith thought he had never loved anyone harder.

He yawned, and let himself fall back asleep.


End file.
